Eons ago, the world's biggest wind turbine

It's now more than twenty-five years since the biggest wind turbine in the world, at that time, was spinning in . . . can you guess where? Denmark? The USA? China? Spain? Germany?

Nope. Sweden. Outside the tiny hamlet of Maglarp, on the southern tip of this Nordic country, the WTS 3, was built by Wind Turbine Systems, which was part of the Swedish state-owned Swedyard Group of Ship Yards. It was one of a half-dozen or so research prototypes built mainly in the 1980s. It was designed to generate 3 MW of electricity, but often produced more. I remember visiting it, where it stood all by itself in the middle of a grain field, just a few kilometres from the seashore, and it was huge. I was flabbergasted that the equivalent of a Boeing 747's wingspan was sitting up there on its tower, spinning it's two enormous blades in the wind. Yes, it had only two blades, and it had a lot of problems; its designers learned a lot, but went on to other things. Along with most of the rest of its tiny family of wind turbines, it was dismantled in the mid-1990s, and wind power faded mostly away from Sweden for most of the next ten years. That was an institutionalized, state-run failure, with little support from the high-tech nuclear power industry that was flourishing in Sweden.

Anyone travelling on the other side of the strait in nearby Denmark during those years had a hard time missing the hundreds of wind power generators that were sprouting up everywhere. Most of them seemed to have the name Vestas on the sides of their nacelles. That was a grassroots private start-up, the result of dozens of small-scale ventures.

Today, Sweden's nuclear program faces an uncertain future. But you can see hundreds of wind turbines sprouting up across the countryside here, too. Most of them seem to have the name Vestas on their nacelles.

The company that built the Maglarp wonder-of-the-world has now been bought by the German company, E.ON. In the last week, E.ON announced that it was moving its northern-European headquarters for land-based wind power, to Malmö, only a short distance from Maglarp. There's a lot to do here.

Foundations for the new offshore wind farm being built by E.ON off Kårehamn, Öland, Sweden (Photo credit here)

"Iceland is not an Arctic coastal state"

"Iceland is not an Arctic coastal state." No, I didn't say that, the Arctic Five did. Who are they? Well, if you haven't happened to have been following the details of climate change diplomacy in the Nordic countries in the last few years, you've missed this mighty fact. The Arctic Five is a group of five states who have decided that their coastlines form the shores of the Arctic Ocean, to the exclusion of Iceland. Have a look at a map of the whole Arctic, a circumpolar map. You can agree that Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Norway, Russia and the United States/Alaska all have edges that bound the Arctic Ocean. For some reason, they don't want Iceland to be part of their club. Although the current highest-level body in the far north, the Arctic Council, includes the Arctic Five, as well as Finland, Iceland, Sweden, the Indigenous Peoples and a number of Observers, the five coastal states have made a point of meeting amongst themselves, but excluding Iceland. That Iceland is not an Arctic coastal state isn't just something that bothers me, it also bothers the Icelanders. Can you imagine why? Important declarations on Arctic matters, involving climate change, the limits of the continental shelves, freedom of the seas, and so on, are being made in the name of the Arctic Five, without the involvement of the other Arctic parties.

A recently-published article by Klaus Dodds and Valur Ingimundarson, entitled, "Territorial nationalism and Arctic geopolitics: Iceland as an Arctic coastal state,"* explores Iceland's position on this contentious issue in a fascinating and penetrating way, if you want to read more. Although the article does a great job in explaining Iceland's arguments for being considered an Arctic coastal state, I can't find where it explains why the Five have acted so arbitrarily, except to postulate that they are acting from spontaneous hegemonic urges. Let me know if you know more about this!

*The article can be found at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2154896X.2012.679557

A map from the public domain:



The map is accessed from:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/image/IBCAO_betamap.jpg
where it can be seen even more clearly.

The future is next week (3)

We don't need to argue about whether the record-breaking changes in the extent of the Arctic ice pack are because of climate change to try to understand what impact these developments will have. Whether we can do anything about the causes behind the changes in the Arctic ice is an important discussion, sure. My own view is based on the science, so for me, climate change is the driver of much of the new stuff that's going on in the north, and what's going on in the north is what's happening right now. This is not some distant idea of future climate change. Today, and every day until sometime in the next week or two, a new record is being set. The future is still just next week.

The Greenland icecap just visible on the horizon, near Sisimiut. (Photo copyright Richard Langlais)

The future is next week (2)

As we know, the Arctic is melting more almost every year, and breaking all the records. It's a pity that debates about whether or not it is because of man-made climate change or not are blocking any broader public discussion of these new conditions. OK, other things are also blocking that discussion -- the financial crisis, the financial crisis and the financial crisis --but these hard times will move on, and meanwhile the effect of changes in the Arctic will continue to ripple through our societies, financial crisis, or not. Changes in the ocean currents that affect our weather, advances in shipping over the top of Siberia, shifts in the ranges of difference species; these are already significant enough. And those are just a few examples. Nobody really knows how it will affect the Gulf Stream. The uncertainty is making me nervous . . .

To see where the future of the Arctic is heading, today, and every day, you can check out:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

No more icecap in this part of Greenland, the coast near Sisimiut (Photo copyright Richard Langlais)

The future is next week (1)

The ice is melting faster and faster. The Arctic Ocean is changing fast. Sometime around the middle of September, there will be less ice "up there" than there's been in about 4,000 years. Let's leave the whole climate change debate out of this, for now. Let's just look at this observable change. If you look at that, you can just say, "The ice covering the Arctic Ocean is changing fast." And then you can try to understand what that means. Today, and every day until sometime in the next week or two, a new record in that melting-back is being set. Climate change seems distant, far away in the future. For the Arctic, the future is next week.

To read about the last time such melting occurred, probably about 4000 years ago, you could read this post:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092181811100097X

Near Sisimiut, Greenland (Photo copyright Richard Langlais)